Bit dissapointed by the responses here. These things are clearly weaker than Powers.
Hammer Blows gives one of the four benefits of Inhuman Strength at a cost 1.5 times that of Inhuman Strength. Compared to Power, it is absolutely pathetic.
And unlike Inhuman Strength, it does not stack with Lethal Weapon. So that won't work.
The only situation where it's even remotely sensible to choose Hammer Blows over Inhuman Strength is the one where Inhuman Strength is the only Power you'd consider buying. And even then, it's probably not optimal.
These don't let mortals compete with supernaturals any more than they already could. If anything, they make more clear the superiority of Powers by being directly worse than them.
Even for a character with no Pure Mortal bonus, Lethal Weapon is arguably superior to Inhuman Strength in some situations. Hammer Blows never is.
Honestly, though, that's all a bit beside the point.
As Becq showed, this isn't really very new. One of these does nothing that a stunt tree couldn't do. It just does so differently, in a way that's much more elegant for certain specific tasks.
PS: Haru, that isn't a good idea. It's much too one-size-fits-all. And where stunts normally scale logarithmically, it scales exponentially. Besides, what does "three/twelve conditions" even mean? Can I overlap them to cover entire skills? Can Stunt Expert give me +3 to four separate skills? Because a single stunt can give me +2 to a skill one third of the time. Hammer Blows is a special case in that its benefits conflict with one another. +2 stress to thrown attacks makes +2 stress to unarmed attacks less attractive, and vice versa. Any other stunt or stunt tree based on it should keep that in mind.
EDIT: In case it isn't clear, I'm not claiming that this stuff is perfect or even all that good. But I'm dead certain that its flaws do not include, "lets mortals munchkin their way into Powers".
